Flames of Desire

by Vanessa Royall

  “Taken? By whom?”

  Davi said it very quickly, as if to say it would remove the weight of a dangerous secret.

  “By me,” he said. “I did it. I once was weak and alone, and there was no one to save me. I did not wish it to happen to another.”

  Selena thought of the great risk, the torment which would have befallen this strange, touching man if he had been—if he was ever—discovered. He will not be revealed by me, she vowed.

  “Do you think…can I see her sometime? The child?”

  “We shall see. It will not be possible at once. Your movements will be greatly restricted and constantly watched, until you please the maharajah enough to be granted a degree of liberty. I must first go to see the country woman, Shan-da, and ask where the child has been hidden. We shall see, in due time…”

  There was no mistaking it now. Somewhere on the barge, someone was walking back and forth, stopping, walking again.

  “I must go,” Davi whispered.

  “One more thing. This Gayle. She was from Scotland. Where? I mean, did she name a province or a city?”

  She could see Davi shrug, a quick movement in the darkness, as he rose to leave.

  “I do not know of that,” he hissed. “But many times she spoke of Greenlaw, as if it were a place rather than something judicial… Sleep well. Let us be safe. In danger, I shall try to reach you with my mind.”

  He was gone without sound, without Selena seeing him go, but she was thinking…Greenlaw. Her body trembled. Greenlaw was a small peasant village in Berwick Province, long under the sovereignty of Coldstream Castle. Many times she had ridden there with Father, to collect the taxes due them, or to watch him serve as judge to matters of local dispute. How Gayle had left Berwick Province and come into the evil grasp of Jack Randolph, Selena did not know. But she did know that a girl she might once have seen, even spoken to, with the natural and self-satisfied condescension of the princess for the peasant, had traveled the path that Selena now followed. And had traveled it unto the end. Death. A Scottish girl, who must also have gazed upon Coldstream Castle, who must also have looked out over the moors when the rains of spring were dark upon them, and thought of life, and love, and the future.

  And now Selena had come to Jabalpur, too, as poor as Gayle had come, just as much a captive. And armed only with her wits. And Davi.

  Davi would truly be of help against Ku-Fel, and Rupal, and the maharajah. Selena felt a flicker of confidence. Why, in Scotland, this Maharajah of Jabalpur, this Lord of Jabal-Mahal, would not have counted for a sturdy yeoman! That was one thing she knew for certain, and it shored up her perspective, gave her courage.

  But she was wrong.

  At midmorning of that day in October 1775—bright, vibrant spring in the Southern Hemisphere—Ku-Fel organized her party and bade them disembark the barge. They had come the last miles up the Narbada ostentatiously, with great ceremony. The barge itself had been decorated at Narsinghpur, decorated as befit a bride, and all along the way people came from the countryside to gawk and cheer. Many-colored streamers covered the bamboo shelter, and the barge itself, and trailed in the waters of the river. Servants in coats of gaudy silk banged gongs, sounded cymbals, rang bells; the elephant drivers, similarly attired, hung glittering metal from the harness, draped colored blankets over the monstrous, gray beasts, which curled their prehensile trunks in irritation, and sounded their great blasting calls in response to the high-pitched, eerie whine of the flutes.

  Selena was seen by no one, as had been intended from the start. Ensconced in a closed sedan chair, which was a hundred times as comfortable and a thousand times as opulent as the best of the Coldstream coaches, she was borne down a ramp to the shore of the river. She saw the beads and bodies of the people through a veil of gauze that had been stretched over the opening, and she could see the powerful shoulders of the men bearing her, and the sweat glistening on their thick necks.

  “May she give our master a dozen heirs!” cried some fool, who did not know of her origins, nor had guessed that, for Selena, the pleasure she would provide was primary, offspring quite a secondary object. Gayle’s example showed blond children as undesirable. Even deadly. If Selena could believe Davi.

  Through the gauze, she saw Ku-Fel mounted on a splendid horse, one of literally hundreds waiting at the river, and then the caravan moved off. Prancing horses, shouting people, all, and Selena, still in the sedan chair. The way was not long. Jabal-Mahal, the maharajah’s palace, lay just to the south of the city, and along the banks of a beautiful, man-dredged tributary to the Narbada. Selena, who expected a mansion somewhat similar to that of the nawab’s in Daman, but probably a bit smaller, was reduced to silent awe as the estate came into view. The road on which they passed turned from packed earth to smooth brown stone, and then to a kind of blue stone, and finally to white stone. And then she saw it, wide and white and glistening before her, shimmering in the sun, dancing in the long, perfectly aligned reflecting pools, as domed and spired as an apparition in a dream of heaven. Jabal-Mahal, her home. In comparison, the bulky stolidity of Coldstream seemed ponderous and dowdy. Here there were no battlements, but low, cool verandas, and no castle wall twelve feet thick, but instead a fence of thin black metal, forged into patterns of petal and flower, a work of art in itself.

  And what was that, something white—no, several objects—on the tips of the thin white columns that surrounded the main gate? Another splendid touch, a final work of art, upon which the maharajah’s subjects might feast their eyes before returning to their humble work in the fields of Pradesh? Something like that, or perhaps something with religious significance.

  She heard the gradual silence of the crowd as people approached the main gate, a silence of fear. And then she understood why. Pressing her eyes against the gauze, she saw the white objects quite closely, and recognized them for what they were: the white dismembered bones of a human body, perched upon the pillars. Arms. Legs. Rib cage. And on the highest of all, a perfect human skull, the fine teeth grinning at her, the dark sockets of the eyes seeking her out in the sedan chair.

  Gayle, of Greenlaw, Scotland, welcomed Selena to her new home.

  “It was done with horses,” Rupal told her that night, touching Selena’s hand and smiling conspiratorially. “A horse was tied to both arms, both legs. They stretched her out for many hours, and paused when she lost herself in unconsciousness. I tried as best I could to give her certain drugs on the night before it was to happen, but Ku-Fel prevented me from so doing.” She lowered her already soft voice, and Selena had to lean forward, closer to that soft, lovely face, those confiding eyes. “Ku-Fel ordered it, you know. That Gayle be torn apart. I am so glad you have come to us. We just join forces against Ku-Fel at once.

  “They severed the head later,” she added, in the unsettling way she had of expressing herself. It was hardly noticeable, in the face of such dark beauty, such endearing charm, but now and again she would say something, and it would be like a flash of sudden cold. Selena was reminded of all the mysterious doors in the palace, and of all she did not know that lay behind them.

  Ku-Fel had taken Selena into the harem wing of the palace immediately upon their arrival, and whisked her inside. Selena saw nothing but milling, turbaned horsemen, and little Davi, far back in the courtyard, lifting his hand to her in a surreptitious gesture of goodwill. Inside, Selena did not even look at the marvelous fixtures, the art, the indications of a luxury far beyond wealth. Instead, she babbled her fear and trembling outrage about the skull.

  Ku-Fel heard her out, and even sought to calm her down, ordering that tea and food be brought posthaste.

  “It was none of my doing,” she said. “Poor Gayle. I sought to save her. It was Rupal, she did it. She persuaded the maharajah to draw and quarter the girl. Rupal,” she muttered, “the only one to avoid my brand…

  “And, of course, you, child,” she added immediately, showing her gold teeth, hiding her eyes behind the fleshy lids.

  “
Was she angry about the child, too?” Selena wanted to know.

  “The child?” asked the harem mistress in some surprise.

  “Why, no. Why should she be? After all, the child was born dead.”

  Selena knew something was very much amiss, and tried not to show surprise. Either Davi had lied to her—Oh, no, then I haven’t even one friend here—or he was mistaken. Or Ku-Fel was lying. Could there be another child?

  “Come now, eat, drink. You must rest. I must introduce you to the wives and concubines.”

  This occurred late in the afternoon, before all of them were summoned to the maharajah’s quarters for the evening meal. It was at this meal that he would select the woman he wished to possess that evening, and all of them were well-prepared and beautifully attired.

  “There are thirty-three of you, in all,” Ku-Fel explained. “It is a sacred number.”

  Selena looked around quickly. There seemed no more than two dozen women, all of them dark-eyed, all of them supremely lovely, looking at her closely, yet without seeming to.

  Ku-Fel smiled at her consternation. “Some are always with child,” she said. “Some are nursing. And some are…in the punishment cells.”

  She was introduced to the women in the order of choice, which meant the frequency with which they were selected to share the maharajah’s nights. Rupal was number one, although Selena was surprised to learn she was a concubine, not a wife.

  “Only seven wives are permitted,” Ku-Fel explained. And she introduced Selena to six of them.

  “One of them is with child?” Selena asked.

  Ku-Fel showed her teeth. “No, no. I am the seventh wife. Indeed, I was the first.”

  Struggling to suppress her amazement, Selena saw the flash of hatred in Rupal’s eyes as the number one concubine regarded the harem mistress. So that was it! Or, at least, a part of it! Being wife and harem mistress would explain Ku-Fel’s great authority—indeed, the meekest of the women trembled even at her presence—and it would also explain Rupal’s anger. She must wish to be a wife in name, too, but if there were already the sacred seven, then someone would have to be…

  “You must help me,” Rupal was saying, her tender eyes locked on Selena’s, her hand gentle and sisterly. “You have now seen our master from a distance, and he has seen you. Tomorrow night he will call for you, after the evening meal. And when he does, this is what I want you to do…”

  On the first night at Jabal-Mahal, Selena, trying with inconsistent success to conceal her excitement, had seen the maharajah for the first time. From her position, far down at the end of the long, low tables, she had seen him, and, if it were possible, she was now more confused than she had been. In her imagination, she had anticipated any number of men: heavy and coarse, with dull, slow, self-indulgence written all over them. Hard, lean men, with thin, cruel mouths, who looked as if they had just bedded a woman or tamed a horse, and who regarded these pursuits as essentially the same. Or soft men, whose lives of ease and luxury had robbed the steel from their bodies, the ambition from their minds.

  Instead, she had seen something else.

  The display of wealth was so blatant, yet so casual, that it barely seemed to matter. Rugs, tapestries, rich fabrics, jewel-encrusted dinner plates, and drinking goblets of pure gold were as common as a pewter mug in a mead shop in Scotland. At the head of the dining room, where the maharajah was seated before a wall of leopard skin, and on a rug of tiger skin, and beneath a canopy of some thin fabric hemmed with jewels, Davi hovered in attendance, and once Selena thought she saw him glance her way, give her an encouraging look. But perhaps not. She was not sure, and had no time to think about it. Here, in this place, which made the great castles of Scotland seem like poor, bare halls fit for dogs, a slight, watchful, dark young man ruled like the most absolute of emperors.

  He was no taller than Selena, with a rare perfection of form, of which he seemed well-aware, and which he accentuated with an unusually colored pair of breeches—dark, but neither blue nor green—and a loose white shirt, open across his brown chest to the navel. On his chest, around his neck, hung a large, glittering stone, majestic and red, which Selena took to be a ruby, and upon his shoulders rested a capelike shroud, which Davi removed when he seated his master. He would not have been considered handsome, or perhaps even manly, by European standards—he seemed too slight, too pretty almost—but she noted immediately, by his bearing and presence, by his sharp, dark, watchful eyes, that he would have been reckoned with, would have been considered a person of consequence, by Father, and Brian, and…even Royce. There was an animal quality about him, and a trace of something that was not arrogance, not exactly. Rather, it was like an unstudied acceptance of superiority. For his superiority, being a gift of the gods, had to be borne as duty.

  She tried during the course of the meal—which consisted of vegetables, various fruits, and yellow rice with a hot, not unpleasant spice—to watch him. He did not look her way at first, and seemed preoccupied, even tired. Now and again he would motion Davi to come near, and quietly convey an instruction or desire. To the wives and concubines closest to him, Ku-Fel and Rupal, and two others Selena knew as Ashina and La-vey, he sometimes smiled or spoke a few words, and now and again he would smile, pleasantly and a bit wearily, at one or another of the many women around the table. These, for their part, showed no great obsequiousness or fear in his presence, and soon, if Selena closed her eyes and made concession to the clipped, exotic speech, the dinner table seemed like any large banquet of friends and relatives. Ku-Fel and Rupal smiled at each other much too widely, Selena noticed, and watched each other too carefully. But, she also saw, their interchange was not lost upon the maharajah. He watched them watch each other. He looked vaguely perplexed, and then wearier still.

  This was the man who held the absolute destinies of millions of Indians in his hands, and all the rich interior of Pradesh.

  This was the man who might have ordered the death of Gayle, who might have ordered, or at least approved, the killing of Gayle’s child. If that death had occurred.

  And this was the man who would soon hold Selena close to his smooth, brown body, which was as straight and hard as a sapling. And not at all unpleasant to gaze upon. He met her eyes once, and looked away.

  Yet, even at the dinner, which was ordinary enough in its own alien way, Selena could not help but be disturbed.

  Just as she had been told, nothing was definite here, even truth was indeterminate; she had no way to decide whom to trust, or even if anyone could be trusted. Even Davi, who was in the room throughout the meal, and who had promised to be her one true friend here in Jabalpur, did not so much as make a move in her direction, and the one smile she thought she saw might just have been a ripple of the muscles of his dark face.

  It came to her with brutal force: until her position was clarified, and possibly even thereafter, she simply could not afford to make mistakes. Of gesture, of judgment, of any other impulse. It was crucial now, even to her life. She would have to study every sign and signal, weigh each of her own actions, and those of everyone she met. She must be wise, or perhaps die.

  And, whether to Davi’s discredited onegod, or to the God Vishnu, whose eternal dream produced the universe and all in it, or to the old bearded desert god of the Bible, with whom gray ministers had frightened her on the long-ago Sundays of childhood, she would have to pray.

  She tried most of the foods on the platter, and found all of them exquisitely prepared, the tastes subtle and complementary. Her body took nourishment, and her mind calmed. The meal did not last very long, and Selena realized it was almost over when she saw many of the women discreetly straightening their gowns, touching their hair now and again in a surreptitious gesture of grooming. It happened very simply. The maharajah whispered again to Davi, and he moved a few paces along the table and whispered something to Rupal. She dropped her eyes and bowed slightly in the maharajah’s direction. Her downcast gaze was modest and grateful, but Selena did not miss the char
acteristic pride and boldness of her expression. Nor the sudden hard flash that darkened Ku-Fel’s coarse features like a thundercloud on a bright day.

  Why had this young man ever married a woman like Ku-Fel? Selena expected that she would never know. If she guessed one thing correctly, it was that Oriental tyrants, however attractive, did not readily share the vagaries of their motivations with their concubines.

  The maharajah rose to leave. Rupal followed, several paces behind. The two disappeared through a curtained passageway. Davi followed momentarily, to see to a last demand, carry out a final charge before the master retired to the pleasure Selena knew Rupal was only too ready to purvey.

  The love artists of Egypt and India, she remembered. Soon she would be one with them.

  “…the maharajah,” Rupal was saying, “is a man of passion, however remote and contained he may appear. He is one who, if given certain forms of love, which I am sure you have already learned from Ku-Fel, will grant demands that, under the light of reason, he would dismiss with a flick of his hand. And his overbearing passion is to know. He wishes to know everything that occurs in his territories, to know where everyone is at all times. Because, with such knowledge, his control is increased and his power enhanced. But his desire for such knowledge has led to many spies, many versions of truth…”

  Selena certainly understood that!

  “…which requires greater and greater efforts on his part—of which he is wearying—and less knowledge of which he can be sure. Now, I asked you to help me, and I know you can. But I am sure, too, that you are wondering—and wisely—why I should make such an approach to you, so soon after your arrival here, when you do not even know me.”

  Selena’s look was an unspoken affirmation of that premise.

  “Two reasons,” Rupal said, her voice soft, persuasive, infinitely understanding. “One, I need your help. Two, I do not wish to see you suffer. You have no idea what it is like to incur Ku-Fel’s wrath. She is a monster, and nothing will stop her revenge if she feels her position has been threatened. Oh, I have seen it many times. The poor woman who is to be punished is brought naked into the chamber of discipline and hung by her toes from a high rod. Then, in the presence of all the wives and concubines, she is beaten hideously by Ku-Fel with a flat length of elephant hide, which leaves no cuts but produces a terrible suffering. Finally, when the victim is screaming for mercy, Ku-Fel calls for the hot iron, and, on the inside of the thigh, where the flesh is very tender, she makes her mark of shame.